Knowledge

How did World War 2 era diesel submarines have such exceptional ranges of over 21000 miles while similarly sized ships only had ranges of around 6000 miles?

A lot of good answers, but only one of them even remotely mentioned a specific trick that US WW2 Submariners did to get extra range, and by the end of the war, was made standard practice for the Fleet Type Submarines like the Gato and Balao classes.

Submarines have 3 groupings of Ballast tanks according to design function.

Main Ballast Tanks (Uses for Surfacing and Diving)
Variable Ballast tanks (Used as part of the trim system to keep the sub in neutral buoyancy)
Special Ballast Tanks (Three tanks with unique functions… Negative, Safety, and Bow Buoyancy)

The Submarines had a lot of reserve buoyancy and really did not need all the Main Ballast Tanks it did to remain safely surfaced. So several enterprising Sub Commanders, such as Dick O’Kane and his USS Tang… had several of the Main Ballast Tanks fitted with the proper valves and gaskets to isolate several of the MBTs for use as extra Fuel Oil Tanks.

After enough fuel oil was burned off out of the Normal Fuel Oil tanks… the fuel in the Ballast tanks was transferred over, a short work of a few divers over the side to remove the covers from the Flood Ports (MBTs are normally open and free-flooding from beneath), and then several flooding and blowing of the tanks to flush any residual oil that may leave a slick (done while the sub was on some other course than its actual course), the tank was converted back into use as a Main Ballast Tank.

By the end of the war and during the the post war period while these subs were still in use, this became standard practice and a specific set of tanks was known as Fuel Ballast Tanks (FBT), as opposed to Main Ballast Tanks(MBT) and Normal Fuel Oil Tanks (NFOT)

If you look at the numbering system of the tanks, you will note that the MBTs are number 1,2,6,and 7., What used to be MBT 3,4 and 5, are now the Fuel Ballast Tanks.

If you compare the Fuel Ballast tanks to the Normal Fuel Oil tanks… Seen here as the Red and Orange tanks…

You can see just how much extra those tanks gave the sub above and beyond its normal fuel capacity, and thus its range capability. (though in your initial question you were clearly confusing km with nm)

Normal Fuel Oil Tanks
1. NFOT No. 1 : 11,401 gallons

2. NFOT No. 2 : 13,122 gallons

3. NFOT No. 6 : 15,201 gallons

4. NFOT No. 7 : 10,054 gallons

Total : 49,776 Gallons of Fuel oil

Fuel Ballast Tanks
1. FBT Nos. 3A and 3B : 19,196 gallons

2. FBT Nos. 4A and 4B : 24,089 gallons

3. FBT Nos. 5A and 5B : 19,458 gallons

Total : 62,743 Gallons of Fuel Oil

They carried more fuel in those converted Ballast tanks than they did in their regular fuel tanks.
That is 126% more fuel than normal
More than double the fuel.

Related Posts

If all the animals in the world fought all the humans with our current tech without nukes, who would win?

First things first. Civilians? We’re dead. We’re all dead. The biggest danger isn’t: Sure, some people will get trampled to death by deer. Some will die to predators….

Which element on the periodic table seems too weird to be natural?

Bismuth. Typically, bismuth looks like this: (It looks a bit like a big piece of meat wrapped in foil, doesn’t it?) But under certain conditions, it looks like…

If a gamma-ray burst hit Earth, would we be able to realize it even happened to us due to its speed?

The problem is speed doesn’t matter. We wouldn’t know until after it hit us. Gamma-ray bursts move at the speed of light. No warning system could alert us…

Has something ever left the Milky Way?

Yes, something that we have created already left the Milky Way Galaxy; it might have even reached Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light-years away and 59 currently known satellite…

If I shoot a bullet at Earth from the Moon, what will happen when it reaches the Earth?

The .220 Swift remains the fastest commercial cartridge in the world, with a published velocity of 4,665 ft/s (1,422 m/s) and the escape velocity of the MOON is 2,400 m/s so the…

If a man walks from the cool pole of Mercury in spacesuit towards the equator, when does he experience total meltdown where temperature will cook him and how quickly does the change occur?

He would die fast, Mercury shows no mercy. Step out from behind the dark craters at the pole, where the cold hangs at minus 170 Celsius, and the…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *